Menu buttons resizing when you focus them is terrible, please do not do that. Main menu background is too gray. In-game is too dark. I don't like the HP/Stance bar being at the top of the screen, since you can't focus on it and the enemy at the same time. I don't like parrying, the timing is really unintuitive. Overall I'd say the combat system is too complicated. People like Souls combat for the simplicity (dodge -> R1). The presentation is really impressive, good job on the models and animations. The writing not so much. I think it would genuinely be better off if all cutscenes were textless and only used body language to communicate events.
Viewing post in Illusive Domain jam comments
Thanks for playing!
- Yeah, it also makes for some ugly layout issues, so this will probably be removed.
- Main menu background is still a WIP, I'm still deciding on whether to leave it as pure black as it is in other FS games or to include characters you've unlocked like how WitchSpring R does it, but for now I'm just copying Ghost of Tsushima (although it's not like the weapon model is particularly detailed to begin with xd).
- If not at the top, then where else would you like it to be placed?
- It's staged like a souls-like and it's useful to market it along those lines, but I feel like it's got a lot more non-souls action game DNA in it now. Souls bosses are about learning boss movesets, while games like CAGs focus on learning your own moveset, and this is just in the middle where you need to learn both.
- Unfortunately, the writing was just rushed out in the past week, so I haven't had time to properly review and cut it yet. It should get better, I think? Regardless, the fast forward feature is there if you really don't want to read, and basically none of the dialogue is strictly necessary for anything, even though it is quite a major feature of the game over things like Kannagi Usagi which had zero context for anything happening.
- I think I'll try to stick with textless cutscenes as much as possible, but creating fully animated cutscenes is time-consuming work. So major stuff like starting/finishing/returning from a boss will still try to take this approach, but optional dialogue won't. I think single line scenes like Nia's intro work well enough, though.